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Posts Tagged ‘update’

Life and Writing Update Autumn 2023

Hi all.  Sorry I’ve been quiet a lot, but a lot has been happening in my life, very little of it good alas.

One good thing however is that we got a cat! After a couple years of negotiating with our landlords, we finally convinced them to let us get a kitty. So please, meet Noodles!  She’s a 14 week old ragdoll/British short hair mix and has utterly captured my heart in the last two weeks.

The other news is that after nearly six months of medical tests, seeing every specialist ever (or so it felt like), and getting progressively worse, I’ve finally been diagnosed with ME/cfs.  I will link some information about it here.  It’s not something that is curable (at the moment! I have hope, I have to have hope) but at least now that I know what is wrong, there are things I can do to help prevent it from getting worse and maybe some treatments for the symptoms.  I’m still learning what my new normal is like and how I’ll be able to continue writing with this illness.

My main focus is Harper’s Tale and getting it ready for public consumption. After the Kickstarter is fulfilled and the book is released, I will likely be putting my main effort into my Patreon since it will allow me to have ongoing support and release small amounts of works in progress and art etc regularly.  I am going to be a slow writer for the forseeable future, there’s no way around it with this disease.  I refuse to stop writing (both for my career and for my mental health, I LOVE writing and I will do whatever I can to keep telling stories), but I recognize that my old ways of working will never work for me again and could actively harm me, so I’m going to find a new balance and a new way.  So if you want to see ongoing work, get chances to vote in on things like character names, see my terrible art, and generally are able to support me in an ongoing way, my Patreon is the place.

I wish I had better news, but it is what it is.  Harper’s Tale should be ready in the next few weeks at least, so there’s a little silver lining.

Thank you all for your patience and support and kind words over the years 💗

 

New Month, Some Changes

Hey. I’ve been super neglecting the blog lately, sorry.  I will do a monthly round-up post this weekend plus talk a bit about Worldcon.  I’ve also been trying to write a post about Clarion, but I’m honestly not sure I’ll be able to do it.  There was so much that happened and so much I’m still processing that I don’t know how to sum it up in 500-800 words.  I’ll have to think on it and maybe I’ll just put it up as a blog post at the same time I get my Clarion project book out and use the same thing as a sort of forward in the book.  We’ll see.

Meanwhile, I have a book to write in September.  This means I’m probably not going to feel much like updating the blog with posts since my brain is hopefully going to be full of novel and not blog posts.  However, I think I’m going to serialize my cyberpunk/dystopia SF/pseudo-thriller novel Casimir Hypogean here with weekly posts.  It’s just a rough draft and I’m not entirely sure I’m not going to tear this novel apart and redraft it from scratch (I’ve already done that twice), but we’ll see.  If I get good reader response, maybe I will just write the sequels instead.  So starting next week I’ll post a chapter or at least a part of a chapter a week.

Here’s the cover, by the way, and the rough description of the book:

A genetically engineered bodyguard addicted to the drugs that prolong her life. An ex-cop struggling to provide for his children. An obsessive-compulsive cybernetically enhanced computer genius.  This band of misfits  scrapes by below the radar of their iron-fisted government in an enclosed city where all is not as shiny or under control as it appears.

Then they uncover a plan with deadly side-effects aimed at taking control of a top government position.  As hundreds start dropping dead in the streets from an engineered virus, the criminals find themselves in a race to decode the information they’ve stumbled upon and unravel a terrifying plot.  Faced with betrayal and pursuit on all sides, the three quickly realize that they must save the spiral city and very government that has outlawed them if they are to have any chance of saving themselves.